Monday, 13 November 2017

The meaning of the word "Mishtaeh"

From RRW
Guest Blogger: Mitchell First

What is the Meaning
of “Mishtaeh” (Gen. 24:21)?

This week’s parshah has a very interesting word: M-Sh-T-A-H. The entire
phrase is: “ve-ha-ish mishtaeh lah.” The man is Eliezer and the “lah” refers to
Rivkah. So what exactly is Eliezer doing? We will learn a lot about Biblical
Hebrew by attempting to decipher this word.

The first step is to realize that the word should be understood as if it
was written M-T-Sh-A-H. M-T is a standard hitpael prefix, but sometimes the
T of the hitapel and the first root letter have ended up in switched positions
(for reasons related to ease of pronunciation). This is what happened here. Therefore,
we have to reverse the order of the second and third letters to properly decipher
the word, and pretend we are looking at the word M-T-Sh-A-H.

As to the meaning of the hitpael stem, many of us are taught in our
youth that the hitpael stem means “to do something to yourself.” But it has
other functions as well. For example, sometimes it means “to do something
continually.” (An example: “hit-halech”= to walk continually.)

We have now gotten over the preliminaries in our attempt to decipher
M-Sh-T-A-H. We see that our word has a root Sh-A (aleph)-H and is in the
hitpael stem (and that the hitpael can serve a few different functions).

Do you know this root Sh-A-H? Of course you do, it is the same root as
the word shoah. This word was chosen to describe the destruction of European
Jewry because the root Sh-A(aleph)-H appears many times in Tanakh and often
means “to ruin, lay waste, make desolate.” See, e.g., Is. 6:11. (This root has other related meanings as well,
e.g., a noisy, roaring tumult. This probably preceded the “ruin-lay waste-make
desolate” meaning.)

The reason we are not so familiar with the Biblical root Sh-A(aleph)-H
is that all the occurrences of this root are found in Nakh. The only time this
root appears in the Chumash is here at Gen. 24:21, and it is hard to fit the
“ruin, waste, desolate” meaning into this verse.

R. Saadiah Gaon saw the root of M-Sh-T-A-H as Sh-T-H. The phrase would
then mean that Eliezer was waiting for or accepting a drink from Rivkah.But this approach does not account for the
aleph, so most authorities reject his approach. The widespread understanding of
the structure of the word is that the M-T is there to indicate that the word is
in the hitpael, and the root of the word is Sh-A-H.

Rashi provides a lengthy attempt at explaining our word. He takes the
position that the root of the word is Sh-A-H, which had an original meaning of “ruin,
desolation.” How does that fit into the context? Rashi notes that there was
another root Sh-M-M which meant “ruin, desolation,” and that root developed a
secondary meaning of “confused, silent and deep in thought.” See, e.g., Job
18:20, Jer. 2:12, and Dan. 4:16. Rashi believes that the same thing happened in
the case of our Sh-A-H root.

“Ruin and desolation” evolving into “confusion/silence/astonishment”? Initially,
I disliked this approach. But then my dentist Richard Gertler reminded me of
the modern English expression: “blew my brains away.” So we see that in English
a term of ruin can be a metaphor for “astonishment.” (Due to their familiarity
with teeth and tongues, my experience is that dentists have very good
linguistic abilities!)

Rashi’s view is followed by many, such as Rashbam and Ibn Ezra. Rav S.R.
Hirsch writes something similar. He takes the position that the fundamental
meaning of Sh-A-H is “bleak, dull, desert,” and from that we get “unclearness
of mind.”

If you are not satisfied with Rashi’s approach (and I am not completely
satisfied), there are alternatives. The Daat Mikra mentions that R. David Tzvi
Hoffman suggested that the root was Sh-H-H, which means “delay.” But there is
no such root in Tanakh. This root entered Hebrew later, from Aramaic.

The best alternative is to understand the aleph of M-Sh-T-A-H as if it
were an ayin. The Biblical root Shin-Ayin-Heh means: to look. See e.g., Gen.4:4
and Is. 31:1. Many scholars advocate this approach. See, e.g., Ernest Klein (A
Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of
English, p. 633). This approach is also mentioned in the Daat Mikra. It is significant
that Targum Onkelos uses the word “mistakel” (=look), but we do not know what
led the Targum to this conclusion.

Although we do not ordinarily
want to understand words by postulating switches of alephs and ayins, such
switches are not uncommon. For example, many times in Tanakh the root
Gimmel-Aleph-Lamed appears with a negative meaning and clearly does not mean
“redemption.” Biblical Hebrew has a root Gimmel-Ayin-Lamed that means “loath,
reject.” A widespread view today understands all those Gimmel-Aleph-Lamed
occurrences with a negative meaning as if they were spelled Gimmel-Ayin-Lamed.
For some examples (there are twelve such occurrences), see Malachi 1:7 and
1:12. Aleph and ayin must have originally been very close in pronunciation.
Also, spelling in ancient times was probably much more fluid than it is today.

If we understand the aleph of M-Sh-T-A-H as if it were an ayin, and if
we adopt the meaning “look,” we have a simple understanding of the role of the hitpael
as well. M-Sh-T-A-H would mean “continually looking” towards her. This fits the
context well.

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We
all know that Shin-Ayin-Heh (=sha’ah) is also as a measure of time. But this
meaning is only found in the Aramaic portions of the book of Daniel. It is
nowhere else in Tanakh. It originally meant “a short period.” Most likely it
has no relation to Shin-Ayin-Heh =look. S. Mandelkern, in his concordance,
attempts to connect the two Shin-Ayin-Heh meanings, but most scholars would not
accept his suggestion.

Earlier, we mentioned the root Sh-T-H=drink. I
would like to mention an interesting phenomenon related to this root. The root
Sh-K-H is another verb that means “to drink.” But there is an important
difference between Sh-T-H and Sh-K-H. When you drink yourself, the root is
Sh-T-H. But when you give a drink to someone else, the root is Sh-K-H. In other
words, in the hiphil (=causative), the tav becomes a kof:H-Sh-K-H. (There are other examples of verbs
which have similar meanings with tav and kof. An example is Peh-Tav-Chet and
Peh-Kof-Chet. Both mean “open.”)

One day, when I understand
this exchange of T and K better, I will write a column on it. I even recall
that my dentist Dr. Gertler had some insight on this one as well!Meanwhile, I have to
stop writing now. I am having too many ruinous and astonishing thoughts and am
also getting thirsty.

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Mitchell
First is a personal injury attorney and Jewish history scholar. His most recent
book is: Esther Unmasked: Solving Eleven Mysteries of the Jewish Holidays
and Liturgy. He can be reached at MFirstAtty@aol.com.